Alignment is an unusual field because the base of fans and supporters is much larger than the number of researchers
Isn’t this entirely usual? Like, I’d assume that there are more readers of popular physics books than working physicists. Similarly for nature documentary viewers vs biologists.
I think the deciding difference is that the amount of fans and supporters who want to be actively involved and who think the problem is the most important in the world is much larger than the number of researchers; while popular physics book readers and nature documentary viewers are plentiful, I doubt most of them feel a compelling need to become involved!
Isn’t this entirely usual? Like, I’d assume that there are more readers of popular physics books than working physicists. Similarly for nature documentary viewers vs biologists.
Maybe in contrast to other fields of ML? (Though that’s definitely stopped being true for eg LLMs)
I think the deciding difference is that the amount of fans and supporters who want to be actively involved and who think the problem is the most important in the world is much larger than the number of researchers; while popular physics book readers and nature documentary viewers are plentiful, I doubt most of them feel a compelling need to become involved!